Lord of the Flies

In high school I remember reading a book called “Lord of the Flies.” Like many of the books we were assigned, it was well-written but seemed...unrealistic. I read all about Peter Pan when I was little and it said nothing about the Lost Boys going berserk in Neverland.

Let this be the post where Disney is proved wrong.

Wednesdays are going to be my favorite day here. What makes Wednesday different from any of the other day of the week is actually a very minute detail, but let’s be honest—the best things usually come in size small. Diamonds, kids, and ketchup packets all come in relatively smallish sizes. Wednesdays come in staff meetings, meaning that for one glorious afternoon the nine kids of Nyumba ya Furaha, the Joyful House orphanage, are under no supervision. Until I came along. And I am delighted to say, “Lord of the Flies” was not $#!&ing anyone.

My first Wednesday at the orphanage, Baraka was waiting for me. Baraka is a seven-year-old boy that speaks barely above a whisper when you ask him to speak in front of people, but when it is just the two of you he becomes an outlandish version of Bart Simpson in sandals. Made of laughter and mischief and a devilish gleam in his eye, the first thing Baraka does when the clock strikes four is grab his favorite book off the shelf and sits on the couch to wait for me to come read with him. Of course, as soon as I sit down he starts tickling me.

That first Wednesday was no different. Tickling and reading commenced so unexpectedly that I didn’t even have a chance to ward off the squealish hands. I’ve learned my fair share of tricks, too, though. All you have to do to get him to stop tickling is say that he is done reading now and he immediately sobers up and continues to read his favorite story, “Hot Fox Soup.” Being the youngest of all six boys, however, Baraka is easily influenced by the older “brothers” at the orphanage. We finished reading and he sprinted off the couch to grab his homework so we could check the math problems. Baraka angelically finished in record time and immediately went to grab the set of Jenga blocks on the shelf. Before I let him play, I told him to go put his math homework back in his bag for tomorrow. Mistake number one. Milliseconds, seconds, and minutes passed by as what should have taken a fraction of a second to do began to be drawn out into record time. If this is how long it takes to put a book in his room, Baraka is not cut out to run marathons, I thought.

Three minutes of suspense was too much. I got up and snaked around the corner to go to his room when all of the sudden, the door popped open and Baraka stuck his head out. He saw me and yelled “Me shower now!” then flung the door wide open and streaked naked across the hall. Before I knew what to do three other boys came crawling out from closed doors like a fleet of spiders in the boys’ hall, all running towards the showers. Some of the older boys wrapped towels around their waists as they ran. Those that didn’t have towels picked up laundry basins scattered on the floor and carried them in front of their unmentionables. As I watched the mutiny, Baraka poked his head back out from the shower section and saw all the boys grabbing basins, so he jumped out, wet and stark naked, and high-tailed it to the pile where he began shuffling through the buckets until he found the smallest one. With a triumphant smirk he put it over his frontside and streaked back into the shower and forgetting that his uncovered, buck naked backside was facing me.

What do I do? I thought. This was my third day at the orphanage, and all I wanted to do was laugh. Shouting, screaming and laughter traveled down the hall as bars of soap began hitting the wall, along with discarded buckets. A scene from the movie Simon Birch flashed through my head when Joe and Simon are running down towards a lake, stripping off their clothes and then jump into the water. As their heads come up they shriek at the frighteningly cool rush, Joe yells “Ah! My balls just turned into marbles,” to which Simon wittily one-ups, “My balls just turned into bb’s.”

Clueless, I went back into the reading room where the three girls were sitting quietly and doing their work. Obviously, the plague of insanity had only affected the male population at Nyumba ya Furaha.

“Do they do this every day?” I asked Neema, the oldest girl.

“No.” She said solemnly. It was only on their own, when they were their own Lord in a land of flies, that what little boys are truly made of came out.

So much for reading.